Putting First-year Admit Rates in Perspective

As high school juniors get their college searches underway, this post aims to help students and their families better understand admission selectivity and its correlation with long-term outcomes.

Excluding for-profit enterprises, there are approximately 2,400 four-year colleges and universities in the United States. Roughly 35% are publicly funded, while 65% are private, nonprofit institutions. Interestingly, enrollment patterns show the reverse: 65% of the approximately 1.5 million first-year students attend public universities, and 35% attend private institutions.

This first table breaks down the 2,400 colleges and universities by overall admit rate:

Admit Rate	Typical # of Schools	% of Total	Est. # of Undergraduates	% of 4-Year Students
<5%	8-10	0.38%	85,000	0.8%
6-10%	15-20	0.73%	185,000	1.7%
11-15%	25-30	1.15%	320,000	3%
16-20%	35-45	1.67%	480,000	4.5%
21-25%	50-60	2.29%	640,000	6%
26-30%	70-80	3.13%	960,000	9%
31-40%	110-130	5.00%	1,380,000	13%
41-50%	100-110	4.38%	1,600,000	15%
51-75%	600-700	27.1%	2,100,000	20%
>75%	1,200-1,400	54.2%	2,850,000	27%

The above table clearly demonstrates that an overwhelming majority of colleges and universities (>80%) admit the majority of their applicants, suggesting that it is not hard to get into college. However, these institutions educate 47% of four-year college students. By contrast, the majority of college students attend selective colleges (those that admit 50% or fewer of applicants). As a result, fears about the difficulty of getting into college are certainly reasonable. Especially when the media, and families in what higher education journalist and author Jeffrey Selingo refers to as the “panicking class” (typically those in the upper and upper-middle classes) focus their attention on the 150 or so institutions with admission rates consistently at or below 25%. Yet these schools comprise just 6.25% of the country’s four-year nonprofit colleges and universities.

While the benefits of attending college are wide-ranging and not always easily quantified, an important question remains: Does attending an elite, highly rejective college translate into greater professional success? This second table addresses this question by examining where leaders—a reasonable proxy for “success”—across various fields attended college as undergraduates:

	Alumni of Institutions with Current Overall Admit Rates
Profession	<25 %	25-75%	>75%
Fortune 500 CEOs	40%	47%	10%
U.S. Senators	56%	40%	4%
U.S. Congressmen	42.3%	53.1%	6.4%
State Governors	44%	48%	8%
State Legislators	11.7%	55%	11%
Mayors	28%	60%	12%
Federal Justices	50%	45%	5%
State Justices	36%	58%	6%
U.S. Attorneys	45.2%	50.6%	4.2%
Attorneys General	36%	56%	8%
School Superintendents	11%	74%	15%
National News Anchors	56%	40%	4%
Local News Anchors	23%	66%	11%

The data above suggest that graduates of highly selective institutions are most prevalent in national-level roles, the U.S. Senate, the federal judiciary, and national news media. In contrast, graduates of moderately selective institutions more likely to hold leadership positions at the state and local levels. Across nearly all professional categories examined, the majority of leaders attended reasonably selective, and therefore more accessible institutions. Notably, it remains possible to attain these leadership positions by attending schools with open-access admission policies.

Together, these findings underscore the value of colleges and universities with admit rates between 25 and 75 percent. These intuitions, comprising approximately 40% of public and nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, educate the majority of college students for good reason: they offer meaningful opportunities for career success. Therefore, when assembling a college list, it is critically important that students not overlook colleges and universities with moderate levels of admission selectivity.

The bottom-line lesson is to avoid equating admission selectivity with opportunity for longer-term success. Students should feel empowered to consider a variety of colleges, which can reduce anxiety and promote confidence in their options.

---

All data were compiled using the Google Gemini AI LLM